


Possibilities

by GideonGraystairs



Series: Love Finds A Way [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Closeted Alec Lightwood, Crushes, Developing Relationship, Downworlder Politics, Family Feels, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Platonic Life Partners, Supportive Magnus Bane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29158812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: Alec breathed in the night air, cleaner here than anywhere else in the city. It must’ve been a spell. He looked up at the moon, and the stars, and the skyscrapers that obscured them. He could be brave, now. He could test out how hot the ember was between them. He could take a leap of faith and hope that he hadn’t made this up in his head, that Magnus felt it too.An AU where Alec doesn't meet Magnus until after he marries Lydia, and doesn't start get to know him until after they divorce.
Relationships: Alec Lightwood & Isabelle Lightwood, Alec Lightwood & Jace Wayland, Lydia Branwell & Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Love Finds A Way [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2120097
Comments: 14
Kudos: 119





	Possibilities

Alec had had crushes before. Of course he had.

First, there had been Samuel Lockhorn, who’d trained with him for two months before his family was reassigned to the Boston Institute. He’d been sweet and kind and laughed at all of Alec’s jokes, even though Alec knew they were terrible.

Then, there had been Jace. And then Jace was his _parabatai_. So he’d latched onto Gideon Ashdown, who’d led his first missions as a rookie Shadowhunter. He was tall and confident and an expert with the bow. In retrospect, Alec had probably wanted to be him more than he’d wanted to be with him. But he’d been a good distraction for a bit, and Alec had kept himself fixated on him by telling himself it was a possibility — Gideon was always kind to Alec despite his short temper with Jace and he had never had a girlfriend as far as anyone in the Institute knew. It was enough for Alec to pretend to keep the hope alive, knowing it was safe because of course it would never happen. But it _could_ , he’d reminded himself, right up until the moment Gideon took a leadership position in Idris and his thoughts went right back to Jace.

They’d stayed there for far too long. Alec had tortured himself over it, emotionally and physically. When his hands bled pulling back the string of his bow, it was the signal for those thoughts to crush themselves down to nothing and retreat until they managed to reform themselves. 

But he’d known, deep down, that Jace wasn’t any different than Gideon Ashdown. He’d thought he loved him only because he knew that he couldn’t. Every year as he grew more and more afraid of his feelings, he channeled them into his _parabatai_ , where they would always be safe. If they were with Jace, who would never return them, then Alec could still be everything his parents expected of him and nothing that would disappoint them.

And then Clary. And the denial had felt impossible. Jace had no room to hold onto those feelings anymore because he had to make room for her. So Alec took them back, and he held them, and he stood on the roof for hours, shooting arrows into the sky. And when morning came and they were no weaker than they were before, he went to Lydia.

She’d held the feelings for him, too. Not blindly, falsely, like Jace had. He’d given them to her, knowing exactly what they looked like, and she’d looked at them too and kept them safe when he thought he couldn’t. She had kept all of his thoughts for him, too. When they drowned him, she coaxed him out of the water with a gentle hand and an _iratze_. When they choked him, she lent him her breath through their bond.

He wished, all the time, that she’d been a man. He’d been frustrated by it for years, because how stupid was it? How shallow and selfish to care about such a thing as her gender? And he’d beat himself bloody with that thought, too. On his worst days, he’d repeated it in his head over and over, trying desperately to look at her and love her in another way.

He couldn’t. He hated himself for it.

He was really trying not to now, though.

So that was why he was here, on Magnus’s balcony, the moon casting odd shadows and the lights of the city brighter than ever. He clasped his hands together, braced on the railing, and rubbed his palm. The skin pulled unnaturally around his scars, and he watched it.

The door behind him made a sound as it slid open and then clicked shut. He thought he could feel Magnus’s warmth, coming up beside him. He offered Alec a drink. “Penny for your thoughts?” he asked.

Alec accepted the drink. It was an iridescent blue that glimmered even more so in the dark. “I can’t stop thinking about the children,” he lied. “I feel like I should be at the Institute, or out there, somewhere—” He waved a hand out to the city. “— _doing_ something.”

It was a believable lie. They’d all been working every second of every day to find the missing nephilim. No one at the Institute was sleeping, the Inquisitor had taken up permanent space in Alec’s office, and every team they had was dispatched at any given moment. Even the Downworld was distressed. Alec had only met with the cabinet once, three weeks ago when the number of children taken had been in the single digits, but they’d been sending him regular reports ever since with all the information they could gather. Everyone was working themselves to the bone, and still they hadn’t found them.

“Alexander,” Magnus said, his voice soft. He put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “This weight isn’t yours to bear alone. You’ve done everything you can. There’s nothing else to do until a new lead turns up.”

“Shouldn’t we be _looking_ for a new lead?”

Magnus gave him a hard look. “Haven’t you turned over every leaf in the city, and its neighbours, ten times over?”

“We must’ve missed something,” Alec shook his head. He’d meant for this to be an easy lie to pull himself from the real thoughts he’d been having, but he felt the frustration and devastation and hopelessness now that had been creeping up on him the past three weeks. “They can’t just be gone.”

The hand on Alec’s shoulder moved, rubbing a circle on his back. “We’ll find them,” Magnus agreed. “But not tonight. Tonight, you need to let it go and just breathe, for a moment. You need rest. Even a Shadowhunter can’t go forever on all work and no play.”

His tone had lifted into something teasing at the end and when Alec looked at him, it was matched by a rueful smile. Alec returned it. He looked down at the drink in his hand, ran his thumb over the condensation on the glass. He took a sip and watched the traffic below them, a blur of lights.

Magnus leaned against the railing beside him. They enjoyed each others’ company in silence.

It was strange, Alec thought, to be so comfortable in Magnus’s presence. They’d gone years hardly speaking outside of business. Alec had always imagined Magnus to be vain and flippant and maybe even cruel, given how protective he was of his people and what Alec’s had done to them. He was all of those things, but never with Alec.

Alec wondered what he’d done to be so special, but he didn’t want to jinx it.

He was starting to have… feelings. It wasn’t a crush, necessarily. It was just… This warmth when he was with him. Sometimes, he found himself looking at Magnus when he hadn’t meant to, and it was difficult to look away. He couldn’t help it. It seemed like Magnus had let his guard down with him at some point, and underneath it he was, just, _beautiful_. 

Alec had spent so long disconnecting that word from any man that it felt uncomfortable now, but it was true nonetheless. Magnus was captivating.

And kind. To Alec, more than most people, it seemed. And if there was anything to be learned from Alec’s childhood crushes, it was that that was all it took for him to fall hard. Wasn’t that pathetic? All he needed was for someone to show him a little bit of kindness and he was charmed.

“Magnus,” he broached hesitantly. “Do you think that it’s too late for me?”

Magnus looked at him for a long minute, parsing the question. Alec worried that he’d have to elaborate — it had taken more bravery than he had the energy for just to say that much — but, thankfully, Magnus knew this conversation well enough by now to understand.

His voice was softer than Alec had ever heard it when he told him, “Of course not. It’s never too late, Alec. There are a hundred people out there who’ll want to be with you, if you’d stop overthinking it and go look for them.”

Alec watched the droplets left on the edges of his glass reflect the moonlight. He swallowed. Hesitated. Asked anyway. “Would you?” He met Magnus’s eyes, who returned the look questioningly. “Want to be with me?”

Then, because that might reveal too much, he added, “I mean, knowing how much I’ve fucked up in my life? How much time I’ve wasted? Even now, I’m still living a lie. Maybe I always will be. Lydia…”

Magnus cut him off, almost harshly. “Is someone you love, who loves you, and who will always be a part of you. Anyone worth it would understand.”

_You understand_ , Alec thought. It surprised him, still. Magnus was always quick to defend Lydia, even though he barely knew her, and he’d never judged them for the relationship they’d had. Still had. Alec expected that anyone who knew would look at it as something awful and turn that anger to Lydia. Isabelle and Jace had, at first. They’d oscillated between raging at her for trapping him into a life of unhappiness and lies and raging at Alec for going into it willingly, for being the one to suggest it.

They’d grown kinder over the years. Lydia was good at her job, and the begrudging respect they’d had to give her for it had softened them. They must’ve seen that Alec was happy, too. At least, happier than he had ever been before. A year ago, Isabelle had come to him with a sad look, brushed the hair out of his face, and told him she was happy that he had someone, even if she’d hoped for something more for him. It was after a particularly awful dinner with their parents, after which Alec had gone directly to the training room and Lydia had followed only to coax him to his office and distract him with mission assignments.

Magnus hadn’t judged him, not even at first. He’d listened and taken it in stride and sat down to keep him company while he stupidly mourned a breakup that wasn’t really even a breakup.

Maybe that was why he was so comfortable with Magnus. He’d laid all his cards on the table in the first month they’d started this accidental transition from acquaintances to friends. All the most terrifying ones, anyways. It felt a bit like it’d been with Lydia, only with her everything had been shrouded in this veil of _don’t say it out loud_. There were many things Alec had never said to her, as he’d never said them to any Shadowhunter, but she’d understood.

With Magnus, he could say it. Maybe it was just because he and Lydia spoke about this only in private rooms at the Institute, rooms Alec had spent his whole life feeling suffocated by. It was easier to speak here, removed from that, where Alec didn’t have to spare a thought for who was in the next room and might overhear.

Would he care if they did? He wanted not to. He wanted to say that he was past this. It was all the people who loved him ever wanted.

_Just be happy, Alec_.

_You wouldn’t be so miserable if you weren’t so freaking repressed_.

_For once in your life, Alec, be a little selfish._

But then — _Anything short of perfection and you’ll disgrace this family_.

Alec breathed in the night air, cleaner here than anywhere else in the city. It must’ve been a spell. He looked up at the moon, and the stars, and the skyscrapers that obscured them. He could be brave, now. He could test out how hot the ember was between them. He could take a leap of faith and hope that he hadn’t made this up in his head, that Magnus felt it too.

He could, but he didn’t. _Another night_ , he told himself.

_A possibility_. He was familiar with those. This one was different only in that it was true.

.

Alec was exhausted. The kind that went bone-deep and left your limbs feeling floaty, like nothing you touched was real. Every report handed to him was blurry until he blinked long enough. He kept forgetting to reactivate his stamina rune. The map he stared at was hard to keep track of — the flashing dots of different colours and the many streets they were spread across. 

He scrubbed his face and shook his head. It came into focus a little better, enough to establish that none of the search teams had found anything. 

The longer they went without a lead on the missing nephilim children, the heavier he felt. This irrational guilt had settled inside of him, and it grew every day they didn’t find them. He wasn’t doing enough. He was doing something wrong. If only he could be the perfect leader, and maybe they would’ve found something. This many children couldn’t just _disappear_ without leaving a single trace.

But Magnus was right and there was nothing else to do. They would keep patrolling the city, hoping, but it was unlikely they’d get any closer to finding them until another child was taken.

So he left the ops centre where two of their best analysts were keeping a careful eye on it all and went back to his room to hopefully get a few hours of sleep.

But sleep didn’t come. He laid there for an hour, feeling dead to the world but still awake. Then he gave up and pulled out his tablet. He flipped through the few reports that had turned up something, then the profiles on each of the children. A lot of them were sparse in details around the time the child was taken, especially when they were from a high-ranking family. No one wanted to admit that they hadn’t been watching, that they’d looked away for too long, or that they’d sent them off somewhere they shouldn’t have. Everyone would talk about what awful parents they were. Their fucking Shadowhunter pride was proving to be one of the biggest obstacles here.

Shaking off his frustration, he continued going through files. This time, he went through what they’d gathered from the Downworld. It was mostly all from Luke and his pack. Magnus had been helpful, but he usually texted Alec with what he found rather than sending an official report.

There were a few, though.

One in particular caught his eye, and he frowned. He didn’t remember this coming across his desk. It didn’t look promising — just a collection of people and conversations witnessed at Pandemonium, which apparently Magnus owned. It wasn’t surprising. Magnus liked to have a good time, and he liked to be in control. 

It made Alec curious. What else didn’t he know? He’d vetted everyone he’d invited to the cabinet, even Luke, but he hadn’t been going through their profiles for the purposes of getting to know them. He’d looked at them with the eye of a Shadowhunter, parsing out potential risks, willingness to work with the Clave, and what their standing was with their people.

Now, he opened Magnus’s profile for an expressly different purpose.

Unsurprisingly, most of it he knew or could have figured out. Most powerful warlock in the city (of course, he was the _High Warlock_ for a reason), well-liked and respected by every Downworld faction. Over 400 years old but age otherwise unknown. Relations with Catarina Loss, Ragnor Fell (Deceased), Raphael Santiago and a long list of people Alec had barely heard of. Another long list of known places he’d lived. And another of his specialties.

Under ‘Known mundane professions’, it listed him as a coiffeur during the 1800s. Alec snorted, but his attention was drawn to the photos they’d collected of him throughout the centuries, enjoying what each one had to offer. It looked like there’d been few famous historical figures that he _hadn’t_ known. And it looked like he’d known some of them quite, _quite_ well.

In fact, it looked like Magnus had had many lovers. Of all different sorts — warlocks, werewolves, vampires, seelies, mundanes. The images the Clave had gathered and the captions of them painted him as a lothario, enjoying the pleasures of every century in great excess. 

Because of course the Clave would consider that a fault, one worth knowing before engaging with Magnus because it made him less trustworthy, or something.

Did Alec? He thought that he didn’t. Izzy’s escapades had never bothered him, beyond his brotherly duty of being concerned for her safety. And Magnus had been alive for hundreds of years. If Izzy had been with as many as she had — a number he didn’t want to know — while in her twenties, it made sense that would scale to something massive after a couple of centuries.

But something in him tightened, looking at Magnus’s file. It took him a moment of staring at the screen before he was able to recognize it.

_A possibility_ , he’d thought. It didn’t seem so anymore. If Alec were going to put himself out there for anyone, it could only be if it was serious. It didn’t seem like that was Magnus’s thing. And even if it was, Shadowhunters weren’t. Alec had known that for years — most of the Downworld had a problem with them. Probably only because Shadowhunters usually had a problem with Downworlders, and theirs was unjustified.

Not a possibility, then. He felt a little disappointed, but it wasn’t a big deal. It had only been the start of a feeling — a tentative branch extending to poke and see if something moved. It was even easier to brush off than his childhood crushes.

And it didn’t make a difference. There was still a connection between them, a friendship that had deepened without them realizing it. Alec, for some strange reason, always felt like he could say anything to Magnus, like he should. He wasn’t certain, but he thought it went both ways.

Alec still wanted to get closer to him, even without any romantic expectations, just as he had before he’d had any thoughts otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my favourite of all the ones I've written so far, so I'm very happy to finally be posting it. I hope you enjoyed it and stick around for the next one <3
> 
> As always, beta'd by the wonderful [jeanboulet](jeanboulet.tumblr.com) without whom this series would have been a mess.


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